A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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The state’s federal legislators are weighing in on recurrent mail delays being experienced by residents throughout northeastern Minnesota. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Pete Stauber both addressed the topic last week. “During the past weeks, I have heard from many of you from all around the Northland about major disruptions in mail delivery,” said Stauber, R-Hermantown, in a Facebook post. “In some areas, people haven’t received mail in three weeks.” Klobuchar, a Democrat, wrote U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Dec. 31, urging him to do e...
The Covid-19 pandemic will reach its third anniversary in March but, unlike in years past, the early winter is so far not showing signs of a transmission peak. Only 4.1 percent of the county’s hospital beds were occupied by Covid-19 patients in the week through Dec. 28, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its weekly update of pandemic-related statistics. During past winters at this time, intensive care units had seen Covid-19 patients fill 40 percent or more of available beds through the early parts of the winter. The c...
When Wrenshall voters made wholesale changes to the makeup of the district’s school board during the November election, their mandate was clear: end the infighting and put the struggling district back on track. The three first-time electees, Eric Ankrum, Mary Carlson and Ben Johnson, were scheduled to be sworn in during the first meeting of the year late Wednesday. But before then, the Pine Knot asked the newcomers about a series of issues, including the district’s struggling enrollment and finances, the search for a new superintendent, and...
As 2022 came to a close, Rep. Mike Sundin left the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul one last time on Wednesday. But not before the Esko Democrat cleared out his office after 10 years as a representative for District 11A. "I'm going back to help Mary Murphy pack up, and that's going to be tough," Sundin said of his fellow DFL lawmaker and longtime friend. "I'll be helping her vacate an office she's held for 46 years. But it's a changing of the guard." It's been that kind of year throughout...
A fire in rural Cloquet has left North State Services garbage haulers - often referred to as "the one with the pink bins" - scrambling, but determined. "We take it day by day," said Lynnette Hansen, who owns the company alongside her husband, Gerald. "We're trying to do the best we can. We're trying to service our customers. We're not concentrating on anything else but our customers right now." The fire to the company's shop and garage at 7018 Maple Grove Road started at 10 p.m. Dec. 21, and...
Cloquet High School head football coach Jeff Ojanen faces a pair of impaired driving charges filed Tuesday in Sixth District Court in Carlton. Ojanen had been arrested and finger-printed by Cloquet police early in the morning on Dec. 23 and was later charged with driving while intoxicated. Cloquet Public Schools superintendent Michael Cary confirmed the incident, and said district administration planned to review details and “address the situation when we return from (holiday) break.” Ojanen, a math teacher, declined to comment when rea...
It's too soon to know just how many cumulative hours of extra work went into cleaning up and restoring power after last week's epic snowstorm, but those costs figure to be exorbitant. To that end, a unanimous emergency declaration Monday by Carlton County commissioners will attempt to recoup state money for overtime and other associated costs for county-related work, along with the efforts of electrical cooperatives. "Most of it is for the utility companies," said Marlyn Halvorson, Carlton...
Fond du Lac Band registrar Annette Himango knew the stakes. "This is going to be big," Himango said. "The impact is going to be huge." On Tuesday, the fruits of her labor and that of many others from the Fond du Lac and Bois Forte bands of Chippewa were revealed in the form of specialized license plates aimed at raising awareness of missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives. The ceremony to unveil the plates at Black Bear Casino in Carlton featured a host of speakers, and folks in the...
The final school board meeting of the year in Wrenshall on Monday featured a host of financial housekeeping updates for a district in cut-mode as it tries to account for a drop in enrollment and subsequent decline in state funding. The board’s final levy certification included a 1.58-percent increase to $1.52 million — the amount of money district property owners’ taxes will account for on the district’s estimated $6.2 million budget in 2023. That budget is in flux, needing to come down from the figure previously approved in June. The school...
One's from Duluth and the other a waterborne city in Sweden that's about the size of Duluth. They're both 20 years old, but one's got more junior hockey experience than the other. They're basically alternating starts in goal for a Minnesota Wilderness team that's close to reaching the holiday break in first place in its North American Hockey League division. They are Isak Posch and Konrad Kausch, and they're goalies leading the Cloquet junior hockey team that's off to a banner start under first-...
“Do the cuts that you can make right now. The longer we wait the deeper the hole.” — Angela Lind, Wrenshall business manager Superintendent Kim Belcastro announced her resignation during a special meeting of the Wrenshall school board Dec. 8. The meeting also served to announce early rounds of $300,000 worth of budget cuts, including the immediate losses of one full-time paraprofessional and a retiring math teacher. “I made the decision I am leaving,” Belcastro announced after 15 years in the district. “I can leave as early as Jan. 5, or I’m w...
The United States Postal Service appeared to work quickly to address mail delivery issues in Barnum this week after a social media post raised concerns about service in the area. A Facebook post by a Barnum-area letter carrier said the Barnum post office was working with one carrier for all routes, with people out sick and hospitalized. "We are doing the best we can with what we have," the post said. "We have to focus on packages right now because the post office is completely full to the...
A preliminary look at the Carlton school district audit Monday revealed what board members and administrators expected: expenditures are outstripping revenues, enrollment is stagnant at best, and solutions like dipping into the fund balance and Covid-19 relief money won’t last forever. “Those are temporary solutions for the next couple of years,” business and human resources manager Norman Nelis said during the school board’s committee of the whole meeting. “We’re going to have to discuss aligning our revenues and expenditures.” But not all hop...
Thirty years ago, when Joanna Wiegert was entering the legal profession, having graduated from Valparaiso University, she found Duluth. An outdoors enthusiast, Wiegert found that Duluth was smaller than her suburban St. Louis upbringing and less urban than the greater Chicago area where she'd gone to law school. "I didn't want to go to a big city. I wanted something different," said Wiegert, 57. "But I wanted to do criminal law, so I had to go to a place that was big enough that they would have...
The Thomson Township board of supervisors violated open meeting law in September when it used closed session to trim candidates for appointment to the board, the state Department of Administration ruled last week. “The board did not identify any other provision within the (open meeting law) or any other statute that would permit it to close a meeting in this situation,” wrote commissioner Alice Roberts-Davis in her advisory opinion. “Therefore, the board did not comply with (open meeting law) when it went into a closed session to review applica...
A stellar week found the Minnesota Wilderness atop the standings, while saying a temporary goodbye to one of the team's premier playmakers. Defenseman Gustavs Ozolins will play Friday's game in Chippewa Falls before leaving to join Team Latvia for the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, which begins in Canada the day after Christmas. Ozolins will fly to Riga, Latvia's capital city, to prepare with the national team, before moving on to Moncton, New Brunswick for the tournament. It's the...
Bonnie DeBondt and her husband, Bill, brought their two youngest grandchildren to Santa's Home for the Holidays festivities on Saturday in Cloquet. The children, Karsyn DeBondt, 7, and her cousin Ryken Robinson, 3, decorated cookies, climbed onto their grandparents' laps and sat rapt as "Magic Bob" made Christmas tree supplies appear from a cardboard chimney set up in the Wood City Motors showroom. "We moved to Cloquet to be with the grandchildren," Bonnie said. "This is what makes it so...
Better walking, biking, trail access is goal of plan The future of the state highway bisecting Cloquet isn't expected to be as vehicle-centric as it is today. A report due this month from Duluth-based Arrowhead Regional Development Commission and the Minnesota Department of Transportation figures to position the four-lane Minnesota Highway 33 as a more pedestrian and bicycle-safe environment, one that also accommodates greater snowmobile and ATV trail frontage alongside the highway. "We're...
Authorities are expected to cite a former renter with a kennel violation following a garage fire in Scanlon responsible for the loss of seven dogs Nov. 18. The former renter at 1208 28th Ave. will face a misdemeanor charge and fine for disobeying Scanlon ordinance requiring a license for private or commercial kennels. The Pine Knot does not generally name a person until they've been charged. "Through her own admission she knows she needed a permit," Cloquet police chief Derek Randall said. "She...
The Carlton school district administration and board plan to discuss an audit along with enrollment and budget at its meetings in December. But this month, school leadership heard from one portion of the school community already representing itself impressively. With 65 American Indian students in Carlton schools, Indigenious children make up 20% of the student population, said American Indian Education coordinator Kevin Kot. "They wanted to have a voice," he said. "Otherwise, it's invisible...
It wasn't a normal day for students in Lynsee Wanous' classes on Tuesday. The Cloquet Middle School teacher was engaging her seventh- and eighth-grade Family Consumer Science classes in a group project. They were baking more than 700 rolls for delivery to the annual DAV Thanksgiving dinner. "Oh, I dropped one," said Trinity Klinger, as a plump roll tumbled to the floor. That one was headed into the discard pile, per teacher's orders at the start of class. "We have a few extras, so that's OK,"...
Reliably blue and labor-centric throughout recent history, the city of Cloquet is experiencing something a lot of population centers are encountering: an encroaching red hue. Five of six precincts in the city contributed to the state's Democratic Farmer Labor sweep in major offices, including governor. Those precincts also favored Jen Schultz in the 8th Congressional District, despite the college professor and former state legislator being clobbered by incumbent Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican...
In debt by more than $300,000, Wrenshall schools administration and its school board are expected to begin three rounds of cuts in December. The first cuts will total $50,000, followed by further rounds of more substantial cuts in January and June. "We have to right-size the school district by the next budget for sure," superintendent Kim Belcastro said last week during the board's committee of the whole meeting. On Monday, the board unanimously approved borrowing $500,000 against future state...
Suicide and foul play were ruled out after the body of a missing 38-year-old Carlton County man was recovered late last week. Authorities from Aitkin County located the body of Lucas Dudden early in the afternoon on Friday, Nov. 11, in shallow water on Rat Lake. The body was recovered within a half-mile radius of where the man's unattended truck had been found. Dudden was reported missing Oct. 31 after he failed to show up for work in Superior. "We had good reason to believe he was by himself," Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida said, describing...
Two years of turmoil left two-thirds of voters in Wrenshall School District precincts having seen enough. They swept out incumbents on the school board Tuesday, giving challengers a chance to stabilize declining enrollment and an operating deficit. “The people running the district are not doing their jobs,” said Dan Gallup, 48, outside of the Silverbrook Township polling center. “Hopefully, they can get it straightened out.” Pipeline technician Eric Ankrum, firefighter and current board appointee Ben Johnson, and wedding planner Mary Carlson...
